More than 16 million people watched Jessica Ennis triumph in the heptathlon on an amazing night for UK athletics.

The overnight ratings showed 16.3 million viewers watched as Ennis powered to victory in the 800m and claimed the gold medal. Even more tuned in later on to see Mo Farah win the 10,000m with 17.1 million watching – the biggest audience for the Games so far.

BBC Olympics boss Roger Mosey tweeted the "stunning viewing figures for last night's amazing athletics". They also included an audience of 15.6 million for Greg Rutherford's long jump gold and 9.2 million for the cycling women's team pursuit win. Sunday is likely to be another ratings winner with coverage of the men's 100m final on BBC1 from 9.45pm.

The Games have been a ratings winner for the BBC since a peak audience of 26.9 million tuned into the opening ceremony. Figures released by the corporation show record numbers of people watching the coverage online, with its website recording a peak audience of 8 million – above the previous record of 5.7 million.

More than 1.5 million people have downloaded the BBC's Olympics mobile phone app and around 17 million people have used one of the 24 red button streams. The website has seen 29m requests for its interactive video streams with video of Bradley Wiggins's win being the single most popular – with 729,000 requests.